Lipman Hearne

A strategic plan is vitally important. It’s the best way of letting the world know where an organization plans to go and how it intends to get there.

But while the strategic plan contains the vision and goals required to be effective, it often lacks the emotional storytelling power that helps an institution get its stakeholders excited, engaged, and bought-in to the plan’s new directions.

Enhanced ability to look at strategy and storyline together is one of the reasons we at AKA Strategy are proud to announce our new strategic alliance with Chicago-based Lipman Hearne. The LH team is a full-service, integrated marketing & communications firm, well known for the brand development; enrollment, membership, and philanthropic marketing; and digital & social media strategy services they provide to colleges and other nonprofit organizations.

AKA has already partnered with Lipman Hearne to add a powerful storyline to the strategic plans for a number of our clients, including the City University of New York (CUNY), Florida State University, Fordham University, State University of New York (SUNY), and the University of Illinois System.

Our clients have found that our combined efforts result in clearer and more compelling strategic plans—plans that get stakeholders excited about the institution and inspired to do more for it—to give it their attention, time, financial and vocal support. Our new alliance with LH means we’ll be able to provide even more clients with the combined power of our two organizations.

And this isn’t just what we think. Our clients are increasingly asking our help in translating the vision and strategies we create with them into a distinctive brand and a communications strategy to make it resonate with diverse stakeholder groups. Put simply, when an organization thinks about both its strategy and how to tell its story at the same time, it works more efficiently and improves the quality of both its vision and the messages it uses to convey that vision.

By providing access to the allied skills of AKA and Lipman Hearne, this new relationship will provide more organizations with the power to ensure meaningful application of their strategic planning efforts.

You can learn more about our friends at Lipman Hearne here. And if you’d like to speak with us about how your institution can leverage the AKA – Lipman Hearne alliance, reach out to us.

AKA Strategy and Lipman Hearne look forward to building new client relationships together, and to using each other’s skills to deliver more world-class strategic planning and other strategic solutions to all our clients.